DISH -VS- VOOM - A Settlement has been reached!

riffjim4069 said:
As Scott pointed-out, Dish bankrolled money for this eventually years ago...just wanted to pay as little as possible, which backfired on them.

Again slow down. First we don't know for sure a settlement is certain, but even if true, you can't say his "paying as little as possible" has backfired on him, when you have no idea what that "little" is.
 
I think you need to slow down a bit. Right before this news you were still saying no way Cablevision/AMC would settle, when they could get all the damages they asked for, plus full extent of sanctions.

That's true. But I think both parties have played their hands and reasonable parties (mediation?) will be brought in to help settle the dollars and cents of this matter. We shall see. CV/AMC won't get 3.5B and the won't get 2.4B, but they will get in the neighborhood of 1.5B-1.7B, a long-term (5-years) AMC carriage agreement, legal fees reimbursed and, if they're were smart, an agreement to optionally provide Dish with one (1) HD channel free-of-charge for the next 5-years in exchange for free uplink/distribution of this channel. They have a acquired a ton of Monsters, Kungfu, foreign films and other content. Or course, the last item is my wishful thinking. :)
 
Again slow down. First we don't know for sure a settlement is certain, but even if true, you can't say his "paying as little as possible" has backfired on him, when you have no idea what that "little" is.

These things can never be known for sure but, based on how this trial has progressed, I feel it is reasonable to conclude the settlement is going to cost Dish/SATS much more than Ergen had hoped for. So yes, I can, and do, say paying as little as possible has backfired on him. You have my permission, both expressed and implied, to quote me on that. ;)
 
No doubt some of the Voom channels were not very popular. And yes, Dish receivers were cable of generating activity reports. However, I did not believe the data they forwarded to Scott. As I recall, Dish compiled a spreadsheet and forwarded a PDF copy of it to Scott. There was no independent verification and validation of the data so it was of "questionable" accuracy. Based on recent events, I feel reasonably confident the numbers were complete fiction. Who know? What we do know is these Voom activity reports are not a trusted source.

There is no reason to doubt Dish I see, and if they really were popular, why would Dish want rid of them? Those 2 parts of your argument do not mesh. Either they were successful and Dish would be happy to have them, or they sucked ratings-wise and Dish wanted to get rid of them. Well, we all know Dish wanted rid of them, so there is only one logical concusion.

There is no doubt that AMC/Rainbow/Cablevision (call 'em what you wish) is partly culpable in this failed business relationship. However, I always suspected they improperly terminated the affiliation agreement (i.e., everything Voom proported in their Amended Complain in May 2008 made perfect logical sense) and they backed up their motion with evidence with nary a sensible argument/defense nor evidence from Dish. Not they're going to get whacked with the full Arm & Hammer of the law for a plethora of monkeyshines and shenanigans.

I haven't read it in a long time, but I recall the arguments dish made in response to the complaint made a lot of sense, too. And Voom's claim that Dish forced repeats and what not is just ridiculous. The logic takes us in one direction: Dish signs agreement > Voom tries to sell Voom to DirecTV, et. al. and relizes any deal that doesn't have all 15 networks kills the Dish deal, so they give up and decide to start collecting money from Dish and spending that $100M to make their own lives easier (i.e. inflate the overhead) > Charlie realizes the content is not attracting customers, no one is watching most channels, and tries to renegotiate > Voom declines > Charlie reasons there is no way they can be spending $100M on the crap being delivered and orders an audit > Audit says they are spending $100M, but with a ton of overhead beyond what had been done in previous years > Furious, and realizing the Dolans are screwing him, Charlie declares the contract breached and retiers Voom to try to spur further renegotiation > Voom refuses > Charlie orders the 10 lowest rated Voom off to try to get Voom to the negotiating table > Voom refuses and issues an ultimatum - 15 or bust, Charlie chooses bust > Lawsuit.

Now you're spinning. Dish's ONLY point of contention is that the 100M spend requirement (although it may be only 82M according to Voom) was for programming only. Period. Dish said this was their understanding of the agreement. As the evidence has demonstrated---and later reconfirmed by the deleted emails---Dish knew that all of Voom's customary business expenses and overhead counted toward meeting the 100M spend requirement. After all, this wasn't a carriage agreement, the collective agreements were part of a business partnership in which all the details, to include Dish being given a 20% equity share, were covered in the April 2005 LLC Agreeement. Besides, Annex A detailed the 11 authorized expense catetories (don't quote me on that number) and Dish's own audit (November 2007) concluded that Voom spent 102.94M (rounded up to 103M) on the 'service'. Besides, if Charlie was a handshake kind of guy, as you suggest, that would imply he was negligent in his responsibilities to fully understand the terms and conditions of the agreement he signed. Moreover, the recovered emails paint a very different picture...an ugly one in which Ergen know full well (in 2005 and again in 2007) that Voom spending included overhead.

You used that word customary again. Like I said, I don't think Voom's expenses were customary compared to what they were in 2005 and 2006.

You want me to say Dish lied? Fine, Dish lied. I also have no doubt Voom execs lied to Charlie when they promised to reinvest in Voom programming and try to sell it to others. Why else would Charlie buy a 20% stake.

If I had a nickle for every lie from DirecTV, Time Warner, Cablevision, not to mention every other corporation out there, I'd be able to pay the Dish judgement myself. Charlie jut went with the legal strategy his lawyers thought would work best. Seems they were wrong. I was just pointing out another, if harder to prove defense that is certainly closer to the truth.

And, yes, Charlie failed. Seems to me like he let Voom's lawyers write annex A and his own people didn't catch that they filled it so much with loopholes, Voom could practically stop investing in quality programming. But I will always blame Voom for that dick move.

It is a big deal...it shows that Dish was aware of the terms and conditions and, made a choice, to purposefully delete (not merely accidentally nor through email policy) evidence that was supposed to have been legally retained. I may be wrong, but I believe these 2005 and 2007 emails were deleted in 2008 after the legal hold was in place. I will assume they attempted wipe/overwrite the file using a 3rd party tool, but I have no information on how it was deleted nor how this information was recovered.

It goes a long way toward proving damages and penalties. For example, if somebody were to be kissing Charlie's boots while he was standing in the street and I accidentally struck the man and killed him which driving...well, I could potentially be going to jail for manslaughter. However, if I were to later make utterances that I aimed my vehicle at one of Charlie's boot lickers, well...I could be going to prison for murder (that or fined for littering :D). The double deleted emails demonstrate knowledge and intent

Seems that is a lot of speculation. Fact is, we don't know when the emails were deleted, rather or not it was purposeful, or how they were deleted. If they used a 3rd party deletion service, I doubt it would have been recoverable.

The damages should be based on the money that Voom lost. The Dish intent is immaterial to that. Sure, there may be punitive damages. But those pale in comparison to the actual damages, and Dish will appeal punitive damages for years, especially if they are extreme.

CV/AMC claims to have forensic data that the final 2007 Audit report (Excel Spreadsheet) was altered shortly before being submitted to the court via discovery, and that major portions of the document were removed. Voom believes the missing sections denote that Dish's auditor was using Annex A of the LLC (authorized spend catagories) to verify and validate expenses. In other words, even Dish's auditor used the aforemetioned document (the one Dish claims no knowledge of regardless of how many times they agreed to it) as the basis for conducting his audting and reporting his or her findings.

Let's see this proof before we declare Dish guilty. And even then, Voom can call the auditor to the stand and ask what is missing.

I would agree, except this case is based on preponderance of the evidence, there is no guilt or innocence to establish. I believe everything Voom has stated been supported by the evidence...and then some. I've seen enough to assume Dish is lying unless they prove their honesty.

I notice you like to say that they claim to have evidence. I will wait to see it until I declare it evidence.

Even then, Dish is probably on the losing side, and is wrong when it comes to the letter of the contract. But that will never change my opinion that Voom is 90% responsible for it's own demise, and were the ones that chose to do business dishonorably by raking Dish over the coals to get more money rather than trying to work together to make the service better.
 
riffjim4069 said:
That's true. But I think both parties have played their hands and reasonable parties (mediation?) will be brought in to help settle the dollars and cents of this matter. We shall see. CV/AMC won't get 3.5B and the won't get 2.4B, but they will get in the neighborhood of 1.5B-1.7B, a long-term (5-years) AMC carriage agreement, legal fees reimbursed and, if they're were smart, an agreement to optionally provide Dish with one (1) HD channel free-of-charge for the next 5-years in exchange for free uplink/distribution of this channel. They have a acquired a ton of Monsters, Kungfu, foreign films and other content. Or course, the last item is my wishful thinking. :)

Who knows, maybe for once your wishful thinking will turn out to be the only prediction that comes true:)
 
riffjim4069 said:
These things can never be known for sure but, based on how this trial has progressed, I feel it is reasonable to conclude the settlement is going to cost Dish/SATS much more than Ergen had hoped for. So yes, I can, and do, say paying as little as possible has backfired on him. You have my permission, both expressed and implied, to quote me on that. ;)

I am just so glad I don't have a habit of quoting you, had I done so, I would have long lost my shirt while still believing I had won.
 
Based on possible settlement discussions, I am going to limit my comments on this particular aspect of the trial. If settlement discussions do break down then I will certainly address your questions/comments because, to be honest, they are waste of our time and breath if both parties settle.

Don't blame you. Hadn't read down far enough when I wrote to see there was a possible settlement in the works.
 
Consider the source...Dish. I talked to several others who viewed the 10-minute morning and afternoon news summaries on HDNews, so I'm not about to swallow this hook, line and stinker.

It was 12 people at a time, not just 12 different people. Heck, if the 12 people watched the 6 different loops, there could have been 72.

Heck, I even watched it on occasion. But I gave up on it when I remember coming home and seeing essentially the same 10 minute loop hours after I watched it in the morning.
 
Why were they prevented from licensing it? I figured there was just no takers.

Damages. It's not easy convinving a jury that Dish's actions killed Voom when Voom is still operating. Since they were only serving Cablevision customers, the service was shuttled, employees terminated, HD production studio assets liquidated, and their film library stuck in a vault. I suppose it's possible that some of this material has seen the light of day in the past two years, but I don't recall seeing any of it since Voom went Boom.
 

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